The Responsibility for Funding Arts in the L.A. Community

Thank you, Christopher Knight, for your excellent, common-sense assessment of the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts grants program.

Not only are amateur arts projects given funding priority over professional work, one does not even have to be an artist to serve on the decision-making panels.

Certainly, no one would question the need to encourage work by minority and folk artists. Also deserving of support are artists whose work is of high quality though not financially self-supporting, even if they happen to be Caucasian.

(The Los Angeles Philharmonic is in this category, but there are many lesser-known, deserving others.)

The self-serving attitude of the ‘80s that training and discipline have no value, that everyone is an artist, simply glorifies mediocrity and ignorance.

A professional artist may spend his or her lifetime earning less because the work demands to be realized--it cannot wait for a few hours of spare time.

Surely, those who bothered to spend the years and money to become trained artists--who live for their work--can be acknowledged as providing something of more worth than amateurs who do it for relaxation.

Every day, we are surrounded with mediocre music and art. What about the benefits citizens of all ages and ethnic backgrounds could reap from access to good art?

Even the work of our city’s arts hobbyists would benefit indirectly.

JANE BROCKMAN

Lo Cal Composers Ensemble

Culver City